You Are Not Alone
by Sillage
Summary: Harry Potter is not exactly as human as most of the magical world has been led to believe, and in fact isn't really Harry Potter at all; and the Master hadn't been the only one the Face of Boe was referring to. TimeLord!Harry


**Alright, well...hello! This is my first story, on this account anyway, but certainly the first story I'm publishing in either of these fandoms. If anyone is actually reading this author's note...this will (hopefully) be a TimeLord!Harry story like you've never seen before. Sorry for the lame title, by the way. I've always sucked at picking them out. It's temporary, I guess.**  
**Regarding the story itself, I've tried not to adhere to any of the tropes that run rampant through the HP fandom (i.e. horribly-abused-and-therefore-Dark-and-disgustingl y-emo!Harry, inhumanly-cruel!Dursleys and so-angelic-as-to-be-beyond-reproach!Potter parents), and I hope that my Harry is not too Gary Stu-ish, but, well...he's a bloody Time Lord, so some level of awesomeness is expected. There will not be any bashing of any kind, not even later on (I hope I've explained Petunia's mindset well enough to make her grudge against Harry at least understandable): I actually _like_ Dumbledore and the Weasleys. Nor will there be a harem pairing for Harry, if I ever get around to actually making him get a girlfriend...or boyfriend. It won't be Malfoy, though, or Rassilon forbid, Snape. **  
**(You Snarry lovers out there are of course entitled to your own opinions, but really...just, gag me.)**

**Anyway...Let's get this show on the road!**

**...As the Doctor would say, whoa. Never saying **_**that**_** again.**

* * *

**Disclaimer:**** I don't own **_**Harry Potter**_** or **_**Doctor Who**_**. Obviously.**

**Warnings:**** Ah...nothing for this chapter. May be violence in later chapters, but nothing of a risqué nature for a long while yet, if ever (this **_**is**_** more of a friendship and adventure fic, after all). This is a WIP. Oh, and this hasn't been brit-picked, so please forgive any obvious americanisms.**

* * *

You Are Not Alone:  
Chapter 1

All humans are not, in fact, created equal: it is a fact that most Earthlings are loath to acknowledge. Some have a keener mind, a stronger body, or more aesthetically pleasing features – these special human beings are the ones, sometimes the only ones who will reach either fame of infamy, those who will be remembered by their fellow men.

And then there are the worker bees, those nameless, faceless people who take on all the menial duties the rich and famous won't lower themselves to doing; those who will only be remembered after their passing by a small crowd of enemies and loved ones. These people, these Unknowns, abound in every society in the Universe – amongst the Gelth, the Sycorax, the Krillitane, the Sontarans or the Racnoss – and yet so few ever come to know their many, many names.

Even on the planet of Gallifrey, amongst the proud race of the Time Lords, such Unknowns exist. Every Gallifreyan reveres or reviles names such as those of the President, the Rani, the Doctor or the Master. But almost no one on Gallifrey, or anywhere else in the Universe for that matter, is aware of the existence of the Architect and his wife the Librarian.

As a fully-fledged Time Lord and Time Lady, they have gazed into the Untempered Schism and seen all of space and time, all that has been, might have been, is, could be and will be. By human standards they are geniuses the likes of which Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking couldn't even dream of touching – but by Gallifreyan standards, they are simply average. The Architect has always had a talent for designing beautiful and timeless architectural structures, and the origins of the Librarian's name stem from her love of books and ruthlessly organised mind.

Our story begins in a time when twenty-three other Architects, and sixty-seven different Librarians also exist on Gallifrey. Our two Gallifreyan protagonists are thus both easily forgettable, and perpetually overlooked.

They are so easily forgotten, in fact, that no one on Gallifrey ever gives much thought to them beyond how useful they could be as soldiers in the on-going Great Time War. And no one gives it any thought, either, when their very young child – barely nine years old, and still a toddler – suddenly disappears from the surface of Gallifrey, never to be seen again. Nor does anyone notice that the Librarian's TARDIS disappears at the exact same time.

The Architect and the Librarian are exterminated in battle a scant few months later. And the War rages on, the other Gallifreyans completely unaware that that lost little boy will one day become one of the last Time Lords in existence.

By Gallifreyan standards, Harry James Potter's biological parents really hadn't been anything special…but then, no matter what planet they hail from, people tend to forget that the greatest of heroes sometimes stem from the most modest of origins.

* * *

"Please, _please_…" the Librarian muttered feverishly as she danced around her TARDIS's control panel, typing in requirements, almost faster than the eye could see, for her planet of objective and locking onto the time and location that most suited her criteria. Her progress in her desperate research, already impaired by the uncontrollable trembling of her fingers, was further impeded by the fact that TARDISes were simply not meant to be piloted by less than six Time Lords at a time. The Librarian had to make do on her own, however – none of her brethren would have allowed her current plans to come to fruition, had they been made aware of them. What she was doing was tantamount to treason: withholding precious resources from Gallifrey's armies by sending her child and her TARDIS far, far away from the war, and hopefully to safety.

Well, President Rassilon could go snog a Hoix as far as she was concerned! The Librarian certainly wasn't going to allow the Dalek armies anywhere _near_ her precious baby boy.

Her TARDIS beeped and hummed uneasily under the unusually harsh touches of her sweaty hands, sensing its owner's distress. The names and basic characteristics of every planet in the Universe drifted down its screen in an excruciatingly slow procession, and the Librarian's eyes flicked through all of her options at superhuman speed. Not Adipose III, not Midnight, not Poosh, and _certainly_ not Clom or, Rassilon forbid, _Skaro_.

It had to be a planet that held breathable air, and whose weather conditions her child could easily withstand. A planet populated with creatures whom he at least vaguely resembled (he was still much too young for her to risk exposing him to the agony of a chameleon arch). And it had to be in a time where no major wars were being fought, and no plagues were rampaging through the lands. In a location where her son could receive the tender and loving care he deserved – and which the Librarian wouldn't be able to provide him with anymore, _oh Rassilon she was never going to see her baby again_ – but which would stimulate his genius mind as he grew and matured.

A place that would be at the same time safe, and extraordinary.

"YES!" she exclaimed exultantly as her TARDIS's computers finally zeroed in on a suitable time and location – Godric's Hollow, UK, Earth, the Solar System in the Mutter's Spiral,1980 AD, July 31st, 2200 hours. Home of the Potter family – a loving and as of yet childless couple consisting of a pair of young _homo sapiens sapiens sapiens_, (TO DIANE: YES, THAT IS DELIBERATE) or witches and wizards as the superstitious humans liked to call themselves.

The Librarian's husband, the Architect, had already been drafted into the Gallifreyan war effort several months previous, and the Librarian held no illusions as to her own chances of survival when she was eventually recruited as well – indeed, being aware, to some degree, of her own future left little leeway for pleasant daydreams. Her heart was already breaking at the mere thought of sending her son away, but she would rather have him safe and lost to her, than brutally murdered by the invading Dalek forces. The proud armies of the Great Gallifrey were slowly but surely _losing_, but her child, at least, would be saved.

The Time Lords would survive in him.

Her mind thus made up, the Librarian had her TARDIS lock onto the needed space-time coordinates and begin to calculate its trajectory, as she wandered out of her ship and into her home's living room. Her dear son was right where she'd left him before she had begun her desperate quest for his survival – sleeping peacefully in his spherical golden crib, which was hovering several feet over the coffee table. His pudgy cheeks were slightly flushed in slumber, his soft blond curls fanning out angelically across the ivory-white fabric of his many pillows. A small stuffed toy in the shape of a sycoraxian sheepdog was clutched loosely in his tiny fist.

The Librarian allowed herself a small, agonized sob at the thought of losing him, but did not let herself waver from her decision. This was the right choice, the _only_ choice in order to ensure his survival. Any decent Time Lord could tell, with a singe look at his timeline, that her son was something special, and she was sure that he would thrive even in such a primitive era and on such a young planet. If nothing else, her TARDIS would protect him.

With a single snap of her fingers, her son's crib shuddered to life and floated into the control room of said spaceship. The TARDIS's thick iron doors – it was presently masquerading as a large, metallic wardrobe – slammed shut behind him.

"Go," the Librarian said sharply, her voice choked with unshed tears, and her TARDIS trilled a mournful farewell as its contours began to melt into the pale golden wall behind it.

The Librarian turned away, unable to watch as her TARDIS faded away, taking her son away from Gallifrey, and from her own loving embrace, forever. She was making the right choice. Her child would be safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

She just had to believe that.

* * *

The next day, she headed off to the recruitment office, ready to meet her end in battle; and unaware that her son would not be finding the peace she had so dearly wished to offer him, any time soon.

* * *

Lily and James Potter were a delightful young couple. They were both kind-hearted, noble, generous, and brave; but the fact remained that they were volunteer soldiers in a magical civil war despite being only twenty years old and, again in spite of their young age, that they desperately wanted to be parents. They wanted children with an intensity fit to make them very, very stupid.

One fine Thursday evening in the summer of the year 1980, they sat in the living room of their homey little cottage in Godric's Hollow, curled up on an obscenely comfortable leather couch and watching an old _James Bond_ movie, and again they wondered. Just a few days previous they had come out quite grievously injured from a large battle between their fellow members of the Order of the Phoenix, and their enemies the Death Eaters – a battle which Lord Voldemort himself had been present at, a battle from which they had barely escaped with their lives – and so again they wondered how much better life might be if they had tiny beings to share it with, tiny beings in which part of them would live on, even if they were to be killed in the next scuffle. Tiny beings whom they could care for and love unconditionally, and receive undying love from in return. In other words, children of their very own.

Lily and James had been making efforts in that direction for nearly two years now, and no matter what fertility potions Lily ingested and virility stimulants James gulped down, these efforts remained fruitless. Neither Saint Mungo's most qualified healers, nor the best doctors England had to offer, had been able to determine the causes of the couple's sterility. It had gotten to a point when, even aware as they were of the dangerous life they would be dragging their new child into, Lily and James had begun to seriously consider adopting.

Which was why they never considered investigating the strange events that were soon to occur in their very own back yard, unwilling to, as the muggles say, "look a gift horse in the mouth".

The ancient grandfather clock that stood in a corner of the cottage's kitchen struck ten o'clock. The cloudy English skies were just beginning to darken as the sun sank under the horizon, and so the odd silvery light that slipped through the Potter living room's thin curtains and began painting otherworldly, flowing patterns on its dull red walls, was particularly noticeable.

Lily and James exchanged a single, wary look and simultaneously drew their wands before getting to their feet and heading as silently as they could for their cottage's back door. Cloaked with a strong disillusionment charm, they headed out into their well-tended garden…only to gape unceremoniously at the strange scene (even by magical standards) they were confronted with.

A tall, leafy oak tree was, for lack of a better word, _appearing_ in the middle of their backyard. Not instantly and with the loud crack of a typical apparition, but instead slowly fading into existence with a series of loud wheezing-grinding-trilling noises. To add to the oddness of the situation, each of the tree's bright silver leaves was suffused with near-blinding light, and what was quite clearly a round brass doorknob was sticking out of the left-hand side of the oak's thick, dark trunk. And the very recognisable sound of a baby's wails was coming from the inside.

After the door-laden tree finally finished materialising in their garden, its contours sharp and clearly defined against its green and grassy backdrop, and both the odd lights and noises had faded into obscurity and silence, the Potters slowly picked up their jaws from the floor and hesitantly began to approach the oak. The child's cries got louder and louder with every step they took, and it soon became obvious that there was indeed a baby trapped in the mysterious tree.

"No, James, it's not safe!" Lily whispered harshly as her ever-reckless husband boldly reached out and grabbed a hold of the brass doorknob. "Don't touch it! It could be some sort of Death Eater trap, you don't know what's inside…oh."

_Oh_ indeed, for the inside of the tree trunk was indeed much larger than said trunk's circumference should by any rights allow for, and a good deal more terrifyingly modern as well. But Lily and James barely had eyes for the oak's simply impossible interior, for their gazes were locked with desperate intensity on the small face of the beautiful, blond baby boy who was wailing away in an oddly-shaped, floating cradle.

They didn't care that the baby looked nothing like either of them, and as they would eventually discover, didn't possess even a smidgeon of magical talent. They didn't care that they had found him under highly suspicious circumstances, and that he could've been anything, from a transfigured bomb sent to them by Death Eaters, to a disguised Mountain Troll cub. They didn't even care that their unfortunately publicised involvement with the Order of the Phoenix would be painting a giant target on the innocent child's fragile back. From the instant that they saw him, Lily and James Potter knew that they would be taking in the mysterious boy as their own.

Lily and James were young, in love, and stupid, and as far as they were concerned their little Harry's miraculous appearance could've been nothing less than a blessing from Merlin himself. And thus once again, the newly named Harry James Potter was fated to suffer at the hands of foolish, wilfully blind adults.

* * *

Lily Potter crumpled to the nursery's soft carpeted floor, her once vivid green eyes now glassy and lifeless, and lay very still after a last, nearly silent gasp. Lord Voldemort didn't spare the dead mudblood a glance as he stepped over her corpse – merely feeling a slight brush of irritation at having been forced to break an oath he had made to one of his most devoted followers – and advanced on the odd, floating golden crib his minuscule fated foe was huddled in.

"_The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord_," Voldemort quoted silkily as he drew his wand in a fluid, practiced motion and pointed it at the toddler's heart. "It's a pity, Harry Potter…that you won't get the chance to try."

The sweet-faced blond child did not seem to notice the malice that permeated the dark wizard's every word. Instead he simply stared up into the terrifying, snakelike visage of his would-be murderer – his baby blue eyes oddly fearless and _aware_, and alight with a sort of quiet, solemn acceptance.

Infuriated by this show of silent defiance, Voldemort gave a harsh flick of his wrist and snarled, "AVADA KEDAVRA!"

The warm butter-yellow walls of Harry Potter's nursery lit up with sickly green as the deadly curse snaked through the air in an instant, and struck true. The child's suddenly slack frame slumped over the mound of pillows his strange cradle contained, a tiny sigh escaping his round lips. Voldemort threw back his head and laughed, long and high and bone-chillingly exultant. His enemy had been defeated before the child ever had the chance to become a real threat, and now Voldemort would go on to defeat his old mentor, crushed as the venerable Leader of the Light would no doubt be by the loss of his prophesised Saviour. Soon Voldemort would reign unimpeded over Great Britain and the rest of the magical world – immortal, invulnerable and uncontested until the end of the time!

And then the toddler's small corpse started emitting what could only be described as streaks of pale stardust.

The Dark Lord's cackles instantly died in his throat, and he watched in confusion and growing, helpless fury as the small amounts of stardust thickened into real, tangible beams of near-blinding golden light, twisting and writhing around the dead child like so many snakes until Harry Potter's tiny frame was entirely encased in a cocoon of its misty glow.

Voldemort frantically wracked his genius brain for mentions of any rituals Harry Potter's mudblood mother, a renowned employee of the Ministry of Magic's Department of Mysteries, might have used to protect her spawn from his wrath. He could think of none, either dark or otherwise, which might have caused such incredible side-effects during resurrection; and the theory that the child's magic might be reacting oddly to his sudden death was effectively negated by the simple fact that Harry Potter was as disgustingly magicless as the common muggle. What, then, could be the source of Voldemort's current predicament, and what could he do to stop this phenomenon?

Around him, the walls and floor of the nursery began to tremble as the entire Potter cottage was shaken to its foundations. Bits of plaster and even tile rained down from the spidery cracks spreading across the room's ceiling, the windows rattled in their frames, and piles of wizarding picture books tumbled from an antique bookshelf behind Harry Potter's crib. A strange sort of song was emitting from the pocket of golden light, growing louder and shriller in pitch until Voldemort's screams of agony joined it in harmony. Its words were entirely foreign to Voldemort's ears; it was pure enough to rival a phoenix's song, as otherworldly as the subtle glow of a unicorn's pelt, and as sharp as shards of glass tearing at Voldemort's eardrums. It was as beautiful as it was agonising.

"NO!" Voldemort howled madly, hardly able to hear his own words over the untenable noise of the alien song. "Whatever that filthy mudblood whore has done, Lord Voldemort will not be defeated here! Avada Kedavra! Avada Kedavra! AVADA KEDAVRA!"

In his terror and uncertainty, Lord Voldemort resorted to that which he knew and understood best: violence, and deadly force. His last mistake, and indeed his last act of magic for a good many years to come, was sending three powerful beams of concentrated death magic at a highly potent and unstable mass of flurrying temporal energy. The opposing energy particles came into contact, vibrated, expanded, and finally ignited.

The resulting explosion destroyed two-thirds of the Potter cottage, and caused a shockwave of power which was felt even several towns away.

Several hours later, a distraught Sirius Black finally finished sifting through the ruins of his late best friends' home and found his godson curled up and sleeping innocently, miraculously unharmed, in a pristine spherical golden cradle, whose previously immaculate white pillows were now more than a little dusty. Under less dire circumstances Sirius might've noticed that the baby did not at all match the description Lily and James had given him of the godson he had never actually met before, but as it was he did not spare it a thought as he handed the child over to Hagrid and went off to confront the rat-traitor who had caused the Potters' deaths.

And so the child Albus Dumbledore reluctantly left on Petunia Dursley's doorstep early on November 1st, 1980, did not have blue eyes and a mass of sunny blond curls, but instead a pair of vivid green eyes and a mop of messy black hair. And unbeknownst to all, Harry Potter was also in possession not only of a binary vascular system and highly superior brain, but also of a capacity for energy manipulation which no Time Lord, and certainly no muggle had ever been gifted with before.

* * *

No matter how bad their relationship had gotten over the years since their parents' passing, the Evans sisters had never lost touch.

If there was one value that Philip Evans had succeeded in impressing upon his daughters, it was the importance of family, and of the bonds of trust and love that it entailed. Even after Petunia and Lily had moved out of the family home upon reaching their majority, Philip had insisted on weekly Sunday lunches in the Evans house, whereupon the whole family could be fully informed of any recent events in every member's respective lives, and counsel, encouragement or if need be, dire warnings could be issued.

Even after Philip and his wife Rosemary met their respective, peaceful ends, the tradition continued. Petunia, resentful as she was of Lily's special powers and rich, handsome husband, allowed Lily to link her new Surrey house's fireplace to the Floo network; and Lily, hurt as she was by Petunia's continued refusal to accept the magical part of her younger sister's life, went through the effort of purchasing a telephone and creating protective, anti-magic wards on her sitting room so as to keep her home's ambient magic from frying its circuits. Every other Saturday at noon, religiously, one called the other and they spent a few hours catching up on either's lives, whether it be such heavy news as Lily's recent injury during the latest magical skirmish she'd been involved in, or as innocuous as Petunia's recent purchase of a new pair of red Gucci pumps.

And so Petunia was well-aware that, no matter what that crackpot old fool Dumbledore claimed, Harry James Potter was not Lily Potter née Evans' biological son, and so this so-called "blood protection" was not only useless but simply non-existent. Lily's adoptive son, an apparent target of the freaks Lily had insisted on hanging around with before she'd gone and gotten herself blown up, had nothing to bring to Petunia's family, save for trouble and possibly even outright danger, and therefore he was a burden.

On top of that, the boy was _odd_ – even more so than the freaks Petunia had been forced to meet at Lily's seventeenth birthday party. And even the admittedly harsh way Petunia and her husband had elected to raise him could not be blamed for the boy's strangeness.

Six years after she had taken him in, the boy, for all that he was allegedly seven years old, barely looked older than four. He spoke rarely, but very intelligibly, albeit with a slight accent that Petunia couldn't place no matter how hard she tried – and the lullabies he liked to sing under his breath as he did his usual…_tinkering_, were in a language she had never heard of. He could read and write and solve university-level mathematical equations before he reached the age of three, and had often been found perusing Petunia's old scientific journals from her time as a medical student, before she had confiscated them all in a fit of pique.

The boy was exceedingly clumsy, always tripping over his own feet and claiming that he only did so because the ground was "going too fast" and "slipping out from under his feet". The only times he showed even a modicum of grace and control over his own movements, was when he was fiddling with the spare electronic parts he routinely filched from the local garbage dump, and building futuristic gadgets Petunia couldn't make head or tails of.

And the boy's _eyes_ – nothing like Lily's kind leaf-green had been. Irises the eerie hue of an aurora borealis, with flecks of hazel gravitating like so much stardust around the fathomless black holes that were his unnaturally blown pupils.

Petunia was unwilling to sink to the level of a violent child abuser, as her dear Vernon sometimes seemed inclined to do – encouraged as he was by his uncouth, mannish hag of a sister. She did not beat her so-called nephew – though she was not above giving Dudley her tacit approval of his bullying ways when it came to the boy – nor did she starve him or, God forbid, sexually abuse him. She simply locked him in the cupboard under the stairs, sometimes for days on end, just so she didn't have to endure the sight of this blemish on her family's good name any longer than necessary. And eventually the practice of this punishment became so commonplace that the cupboard became the boy's room.

And Harry Potter even seemed to enjoy it, the little freak that he was. While he welcomed any scrap of attention, positive or otherwise, that was thrown at him, he never actively sought out human company. He seemed perfectly happy to spend hours locked in his cupboard, fiddling with whatever unconventional but highly innovative creation he was building that week. As long as he had regular meals and bathroom breaks, a working light bulb, and sufficient hydration, he remained as quiet and unobtrusive as a mouse.

For indeed, loath as Petunia was to admit it, she could not deny that her so-called nephew was an almost unnaturally obedient child. He never even attempted to question her orders, was unfailingly polite to her no matter how insultingly se addressed him, and seemed genuinely eager to please her with the assiduity with which he completed the chores she assigned him. He was always willing to fix the electronic appliances Petunia's neighbours sometimes sought his help for, and never asked for monetary recompense. He was a model student, a gifted artist, a genuine little gentleman, and according to government-approved IQ tests, a true-blue genius. But instead of endearing him to Petunia, this extensive list of his qualities only served to fan the flames of her hatred and resentment. Just as Petunia had almost perpetually lived in her sister's shadow, Harry Potter was hogging the spotlight from her dear Dudley in almost every way.

* * *

It all came to a head one fine October day, in the year 1987.

Petunia and Vernon were in charge of the monthly neighbourhood garden party, and nearly the whole of Privet Drive was gathered up in their pristine back yard, chatting companionably as they sipped at chilled lemonade and nibbled on various barbecued delicacies. Vernon had been just about to break out the champagne to celebrate Mr Turner's promotion in the local post office, when an ecstatic, grease-covered Harry Potter suddenly barrelled into the back yard, excitedly announcing the completion of his latest, and as of yet biggest project.

"It's a telly, a giant telly!" Harry explained happily as he led the intrigued crowd of guests away from a seething Vernon and into the Dursleys' garage. "I made it so that it gets channels from all over the world, I only really understand those from here and from America, though…"

The guests chuckled indulgently, no doubt thinking it a child's fanciful tales, but willing to observe his newest creation nonetheless. They were very surprised however, to find that the garage was now indeed host to a television set of massive proportions, as tall as a full-grown man and nearly wall-to-wall – not only that, but its screen was smooth rather than convex, and the telly itself was abnormally wide and flat. It did not seem to be fitted with any sort of command panel, nor did it possess the antennae that would allow it to connect to the necessary signals. In short, it did not look very much like a telly at all.

But before the guest's scepticism could morph into disinterest and patronising politeness, Harry pulled a pale white, egg-shaped zapper out of his pocket and pressed a few buttons, until a Brazilian football match appeared on screen, with both amazing sound quality and superior image definition. Unsurprisingly, the rest of the garden party was in fact spent in the Dursleys' garage, the men arguing with their wives about wanting to watch the footie match until its end while said wives attempted to find out if the telly could even get channels from places as far as Japan.

Vernon's face was already blotchy with rage, but for Petunia, the breaking point was when Mrs Polkiss from Number Twelve, the mother of Dudley's classmate and best friend Piers, pulled her aside and into a quiet conversation, the first words of which were as follows:

"You must be so proud of your nephew! Why, that television is obviously years ahead of its time, the boy's a genius! It must be pleasure, having such a delightful child in your home when the other one is so…well…_troublemaker_ is the kindest word I've heard my son's teachers use to describe him."

For Petunia, this was the last straw. She had welcomed the little freak into her home, allowed him to eat from her own table and litter the house with his unnatural little experiments, but undermining her beloved Duddykins in the eyes of her ever-judgmental neighbours? That was something she would not stand for. Petunia didn't care what Dumbledore and his merry band of Freaks might do to her in retaliation – she'd be rid of the pest before the night was out.

And indeed that evening after all of her guests had gone home, she booted Harry out of his cupboard, packed a knapsack full of his things, along with a few banknotes and a thermos of chicken soup, and bundled him into her car. She ignored Vernon's questioning glances, ignored Dudley's jealous demands to be taken on a road trip as well, and drove Harry all the way up the country to Godric's Hollow.

She arrived there just as night began to fall, gazed up at the ruin that was the destroyed home of Harry Potter's late parents, and unceremoniously dumped him there. And for the next several years she never gave her nephew, or what might've become of him, a second thought.

* * *

A large barn owl was perched on the edge of what had once been a rough-hewn stone windowsill on the destroyed Potter cottage's second floor, hooting sporadically as the sky darkened overhead. Harry met its piercing amber-coloured stare unblinkingly until he felt his own, tired eyes beginning to water with both strain and sheer, despondent hopelessness.

Harry had always known that he wasn't well liked in Little Whinging, Surrey. He had done his very best to be as polite and pleasant as possible to anyone who deigned to address him, and he knew he'd made a positive impression on many of his Aunt and Uncle's neighbours by acting as their free amateur repairman, but the fact remained that he had simply been too different, too…_everything_ to really fit into the small community. Too curious, too driven, too quiet and, if he did say so himself, too clever.

The grown-up inhabitants of Privet Drive had always chosen to either patronise him and treat him with passive disdain, feel threatened by his intelligence, or in his relatives' case, outright defame him for any number of imaginary reasons and spread nasty rumours about him. As for the children, Dudley's repeated threats of thrashing anyone who dared talk to the Freak had effectively destroyed any of Harry's chances at ever making friends his own age. And so Harry was left on his own with his many mechanical and electronic creations, _all the time_ – and when he wasn't, he wished he could've been, because it usually meant that he was either completing chores under Petunia's eagle-like stare, or getting thwapped on the back of the head by Uncle Vernon in the hope that the blow might "knock it straight".

Harry had no clear memories of ever having been hugged. For that matter, he barely remembered even having been called by his first name, instead of a simple "little boy", "lad", or more spiteful epithet, by anyone save for his school teachers. So now that his Aunt had finally decided to get rid of him, after he had foolishly stolen her spotlight in his excitement over his newest creation, he couldn't really say that he was honestly surprised.

And at least she'd left him with a rucksack full of his things before abandoning him in the middle of nowhere.

Heaving a large, dismal sigh that sounded embarrassingly close to a choked sob, Harry shouldered his bag and hesitantly trudged down the gravel walkway that led to the rusted wrought iron gates of his childhood home. One of the doors of said gates looked like a particularly irate muscleman had had a go at it; the other one, while intact, seemed to be housing more than a few inhabited sparrow nests.

He slowly pushed open the latter, careful not to disturb the nests, and winced when the loud, creaking whinge of its hinges rent the quiet night air. Shoulders tense with wariness, he let the gates fall shut behind him and stepped into the garden beyond, a garden that could only be described in polite company as "wild".

The entire yard was bracketed by overgrown hedges heavily laden with berries, which Harry was almost positive were poisonous. Rosebushes which might've once been neatly trimmed were now climbing the rough stone façade of the Potter cottage like so much clinging ivy, and the house's front lawn was almost completely overrun with weeds as tall as a grown man' waist. The branches of a nearby tree had grown long and low enough to poke straight through a broken window on the cottage's first floor, and the apples which littered the grassy ground at the foot of another one filled the cool night air with the sickly-sweet smell of rot, which was a particularly unpleasant fragrance when mixed with the omnipresent scents of soot and fire that still clung to the cottage's ruins. And then there was that little detail: Harry wouldn't have found it surprising if he had simply found the place in a state of rather advanced disrepair, but it was quite obvious with a single look at the aforementioned ruins that a fairly large _explosion_ had taken place here. Where did his parents' deaths, allegedly _via_ car accident, come into play in this case, then?

The entire enclosure of the Potter property was abnormally silent and still, and it wasn't until Harry saw a car drive by the rusted gates he had just gone through that he realised exactly why: he could not hear a single one of the noises being emitted outside the limits of the Potter property. And inside its bounds, there wasn't a songbird's trill or a cricket's chirp to be heard – nothing but the quiet, eerie howls of the night breeze as it blew through the many holes in the destroyed cottage. Harry gazed up at the full moon above, the eagle-shaped iron sculpture that had once adorned the Potter's roof cutting a menacing figure against its gibbous backdrop, and honestly felt as though he'd just inadvertently stepped onto the set of a Tim Burton movie.

Despite the place having been abandoned for years, there was not a single sign of life in the area.

The correct thing to do by anyone's standards, would've been for Harry to leave this potentially dangerous ruin, find the nearest police station, inform them of his current predicament and let the law take care of the rest. Staying here all alone would be much too dangerous for a seven-year-old boy, especially since a group of drug-dealing gangsters, or a starving bear, could've been squatting his parents' home for all Harry knew. But Harry was all too aware of how _displeased_ his Aunt would be if the police were to summarily return Harry to her doorstep after she'd finally taken the plunge and gotten rid of him, and Harry had heard too many horror stories about orphanages to consider telling the police that he was an orphan and letting them dump him onto the system. Helpful, and likely law-abiding neighbours of his late parents were out as well, for obvious reasons. No, it seemed that Harry was on his own for the foreseeable future. As a suddenly homeless seven-year-old he'd probably experience some degree of difficulty when it came to survival, sooner rather than later, but he was clever: he'd figure something out. Eventually.

Well, since it seemed he'd be sleeping here tonight…Harry shot a quick, wistful glance at the mostly unharmed front door of the Potter cottage, but shook his head in resignation. It was getting to be darker and a lot colder, and Harry would've liked to sleep in a place which had at least part of a roof as shelter from any potential downpours; but said dilapidated roof was just as likely to finally give out during the night and crush him under several tons of rock and tile, as it was to keep him dry, were he to chance kipping under it.

The sound of his ratty trainers squelching wetly on the damp grass underfoot echoed in the ringing silence of the deserted property as he rounded the corner of the cottage. He was disappointed to find that the house's back yard did not in fact contain a handy shed he might huddle in for the night; but it did, at least, have an oak of rather impressive size, whose wide branches and surprisingly dense foliage (he'd never seen a tree with silver leaves before, but maybe it was one of those fancy, colourful Asian strains of trees Aunt Petunia and Mrs Turner sometimes liked to gush over) might provide him with adequate shelter.

He collapsed gracelessly into a fairly comfortable nook between the tree's thick roots, settling his rucksack into his lap and pulling up the hood of his tattered, oversized winter coat to protect his ears from the night's chill. The chicken soup Aunt Petunia had reluctantly gifted him with before their departure had long gone cold, and did little to soothe the increasingly violent trembling of Harry's skinny limbs, but he ignored it, carefully screwing the thermos's lid back on once he was full and reclining his head against the oak's surprisingly warm trunk.

He had been sure that his sudden, drastic change in situation and place of residence would keep him up half the night with teary eyes and a whirring brain, but instead felt himself slip into oblivion as soon as he allowed his eyes to flutter closed.

He quickly fell into a dreamless sleep, a sleep so deep that he did not hear the sound of a wooden door softly clicking open right beside his ear; nor did he feel the tendrils of golden light which slithered through the hidden doorjamb to envelop him in a warm embrace, and proceeded to draw him deeper into the unknown.

* * *

Harry came to in a place that felt like _home_, _safety_ and _warmth_ in ways nothing else in his young life ever had before.

The ground was, for once, utterly still beneath his supine body – not moving, not shaking, not spinning out uncontrollably from underneath him. Just perfectly, wonderfully stable. The air around him felt warm, but not too hot as it almost always had during the summer in Privet Drive; and it smelled like a bit like the orange blossom-scented fabric softener Aunt Petunia liked to use on bed sheets, only fresher and more…natural. There was a soft and not unpleasant buzzing in the Harry's ears, as if someone were humming a soothing lullaby right into his heart – to that one little place in the back of head that always felt so wretchedly, irrevocably alone, like there _should've been _voices, or perhaps music of some sort, keeping his mind company.

Slowly, cautiously, Harry sat up on his elbows and dared to open his eyes a sliver…only to almost shut them right back again after briefly taking stock of his surroundings.

This place – it was nothing like _anything_ one would be able to find on Earth, Harry was certain of it. The high, vaulted ceiling above him was dotted with thick, blunt spikes made of some sort of glittering, coppery material, as were the six walls of the vast, circular room he had somehow found his way into. Tall spires of coppery, almost organic-looking mineral linked the silvery metal floor to the aforementioned ceiling like so many twisting, spiralling columns.

Harry was lying on an oddly soft, circular doormat at the foot of a small flight of metallic stairs. A few paces away from him, at the very centre of the hexagonal room, stood a vaguely mushroom-shaped metallic control panel decked out with a myriad screens, brass levers, buttons of all shapes and sizes, and a multitude of other contraptions the purpose of which Harry could only guess at. An eight-foot-tall, wide tube of clear glass protruded from the heart of the console, emitting a ghostly, strangely welcoming orange glow – the likes of which one might enjoy sitting by a roaring fireplace in the dead of winter – that made its surroundings gleam and sparkle as though they had just been scrubbed clean by a particularly thorough hand.

Belatedly, Harry closed his gaping mouth and staggered to his feet, trotting excitedly towards the control panel to run reverent fingers over its pristine surface. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had once been forced to drag Harry and Dudley along for a business dinner at a very posh hotel in London, and even the gorgeous dining hall Harry had so admired back then was nothing compared to the sheer, alien magnificence of this fantastical room!

An odd purr echoed in Harry's ears, making his spine rattle pleasantly from the resonance of it, and with a start he realised that this place, whatever it was, was truly _alive_. In fact, after listening carefully for a few moments, he was almost certain that the lullaby he had been distantly hearing since his awakening in this strange room, was in fact coming from the very console he was hesitantly caressing…or from something under it, _inside_ of it.

_Okay_…now this was starting to become increasingly creepy, instead of reassuring.

Harry backed away from the console, vaguely expecting some sort of siren-like monster to burst out from under its surface and devour him, and hurriedly spinning on his heel before tromping up the stairs he'd apparently been brought in through. Idly noticing that his rucksack seemed to have followed him into the mysterious room as well (it was leaning innocently against the bottom step), he hurriedly turned the knob of the incongruously old-fashioned oval-shaped wooden door that was blocking his exit, and stumbled out into…

The back yard of his parents' cottage in Godric's Hollow.

Harry stopped dead, arms rigid at his sides and eyes wide enough to pop out of their sockets. He was positive that he hadn't seen any sort of building in the aforementioned back yard, the previous night, that might've been large enough to hold the room he had just escaped from. So where…_exactly_…had Harry spent the night…?

He turned around, did a double-take, blinked, swallowed, pinched himself, and finally resigned himself to the reality of the fact that he had just come tumbling out of the trunk of the tree under which he had taken refuge last night.

He slowly circled around the seemingly innocuous oak tree, looking for any shimmer that might hint at some sort of optical illusion hiding the mysterious room from view. He even gave a few good knocks to its trunk, only to become further perplexed when it did not ring hollow in spite of the vast room the tree obviously contained. And as he grabbed the round doorknob sticking innocently out of the front of said trunk, and opened the rough wooden door to once more gaze upon a scientific impossibility, Harry felt more than a bit faint.

His wobbly legs finally gave out on him after a few more moments of staring, and he slowly sank to his knees on the dewy grass, trying to regulate his racing hearts-rate by taking deep, even breaths. He had just about regained his composure when _something_ decided to make it even more difficult for him to remain calm, by reaching out and somehow _brushing against_ _his mind_. It felt strangely pleasant, like a warm summer breeze soothingly caressing his brain, but at the same time so deeply invasive that he wanted to gag. It was only the positive intentions he could somehow sense from the mental intruder that kept Harry from screwing his eyes shut against his suddenly nonsensical world and screaming himself hoarse.

The intruder's touch on his thoughts became softer then, almost apologetic, and profoundly, almost desperately welcoming. The being – the entity – the _thing_ inside the console, it was calling to him. It wanted him to go back inside the room, to trust it, to let it take care of him. Almost…well, almost like a mother.

_Come back_, the Something was saying, low and calm and crooning. _Come back inside, child of my own, lost son of Gallifrey. You are home. Do not be afraid. Come back_.

His mind full of tired wonder and joyful disbelief, Harry screwed up all of his courage, got to his feet, and went.

* * *

On October twenty-third, 1987, the doors of the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry slowly opened, seemingly of their own accord, as students and teachers alike settled down to enjoy their dinners' complimentary desserts. Hardly anyone bothered to look up as the doors creaked on their massive hinges: indeed, this was hardly an unusual event, seeing as members of the faculty often arrived late for meals when they were busy preparing for the morrow's lessons.

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, current Headmaster of the respected magical school, was one of the few who directed their attention towards the new arrival; but this time the doors did not reveal a sourly muttering Filch, a sheepishly cheerful Professor Flitwick or a dirt-covered and exhausted Professor Sprout…but instead, the inside of a large and entirely futuristic room the likes of which even the venerable Headmaster had never seen before.

A hush descended over the Great Hall as a small boy – no older than seven or eight years of age if Albus had to guess – with unruly black hair and otherworldly green eyes ducked through the doors and surveyed his surroundings with an air of general disdain. One of his small hands was tucked into the pocket of his baggy jeans, while the other one was fiddling idly with the thick chain of the large, ornate golden pendant that rested on his skinny chest.

And there was a distinctive scar, shaped very much like a bolt of lightning, etched into the fair skin of his forehead.

"It seems I've overshot again, TARDIS," the boy said calmly, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that he was addressing little more than thin air. "I was aiming for the early Viking raids of 793, but I appear to have ended up in some sort of monastery in the early seventeen hundreds…"

Reflexively, Albus opened his mouth to correct the boy's assumptions, perfectly reasonable though they were given the choice of attire of most of Hogwarts' faculty members and student body. But the boy did not even spare him a glance as he darted forward, snatched an entire platter of treacle tarts from the Ravenclaw table, and retreated into his impossible room. The Great Hall's doors slammed shut behind him with a snap of his fingers, and a series of wheezing-grinding-trilling noises later, he was gone.

It only took a few more moments of collective incredulity on the wizards and witches' part, for pandemonium to erupt.

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED...**

**All right, folks! For those who might've missed that particular detail, Harry was _never_ submitted to the chameleon arch: all along, he's been a Gallifreyan living on Earth, through and through - two hearts and everything. If you're asking why the muggles didn't notice his binary vascular system, orange blood and lower-than-average body temperature...well, let's just blame it on the TARDIS's inbuilt perception filter or something. Which somehow worked at a distance. Whatever.**  
**Harry doesn't wear glasses because he's Gallifreyan, and his physiology is awesome like that. Ten only wears his "brainy specs" to (successfully) look adorably nerdy anyway.**  
**As for what I've hinted to...yes, Harry has somehow gained magical abilities after his regeneration, for reasons which will be explained later. I'm sure the more avid Whovians have already figured out the why of it, though. Oh, and I know I didn't do the whole beams-of-light-come-out-the-sleeves-and-collar regeneration shtick, but as Harry was only wearing a diaper when he was brutally murdered in his crib, I think it would've been rather awkward.**  
**You may point out any other obvious plot holes to me, and if I haven't already planned out a way around them for later chapters, I'll try and answer in a way that satisfies you, hypothetical reader.**

**So...I really don't want to be one of those kinda whiny writers who demand reviews if they are to ever release a chapter again, but, well, I don't have much time for writing at the moment (I'm smack dab in the middle of my bac - French end-of-high-school exams - and about to go wade into the administrative mess that is registering for uni) so it's unlikely that I'll make an effort to write the next chapters if I don't receive ample appreciation.**  
**So, y'know, review if you like it. Or at least fave, or follow, or...or something. And if you don't, please don't flame me too cruelly, 'cuz I really will cry.**

**Anyway, hope you enjoyed this rather uneventful first chapter and will come back for more if I ever do get around to publishing chapter two!**

**Sillage**


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